Angels for Change Goes ALL IN on Ending Drug Shortages with Fifth Annual SummitONE Conference
10 Julio 2024 - 3:46PM
Business Wire
Angels for Change, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending
drug shortages, hosted the fifth annual SummitONE conference on
July 8 and 9 at Fresenius Kabi’s U.S. headquarters in Lake Zurich,
Illinois. SummitONE is the only annual conference that gathers
supply chain leaders, drug shortage experts, policy makers, and
patients to discuss solutions to end drug shortages.
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The theme of the 2024 conference was “ALL IN: Ending Drug
Shortages.” Angels for Change founder and Chief Change Maker Laura
Bray expressed the need for supply chain members to commit to
collaborate to ensure the supply chain is ALL IN for patients. Key
insights and takeaways included:
- Economics: Presenters broadly agreed that the root cause
of most essential medicines shortages was economic. The generic
pharmaceutical market is broken and does not reward resource-heavy
resiliency and reliability investments. The majority of drug
shortages in 2023 were for generic sterile injectables. These
medicines are essential to patient care yet valued at less than $2
per dose.
- Education: The group was in consensus that educating
policy makers and stakeholders on the unique differences of the
generic and branded markets is important. The price of branded
drugs increases year after year, but the price of most generic
medicines decreases every year, sometimes multiple times, leading
to unsustainability. In America, one in 10 prescriptions is filled
with a branded drug, yet branded drugs account for 85% of all
pharmaceutical spending. All stakeholders must amplify each other’s
voices.
- Shared Information: A demo of the PULSE pilot was
shared. PULSE is a new online tool that creates a trusted ecosystem
for stakeholders to communicate, report and respond to drug
shortages. Pilot members are National Association of Boards of
Pharmacy, Angels for Change, and the End Drug Shortages
Alliance.
- Public-private partnerships must be part of the solution
to end drug shortages. Attendees identified the potential of
getting creative with public-private partnerships to address drug
shortages. Collaborative efforts between government agencies,
health care providers, wholesalers, pharmaceutical companies and
patients can lead to innovative solutions, shared investment in
supply chain resilience and better patient care.
- Rewarding Resilience: Purchasers must have a way to
evaluate resilience and make purchasing decisions that award
resilience accordingly. New reimbursement models and financial
incentives can lead to meaningful change.
- Trust: To take risks together and make meaningful
change, stakeholders must be able to trust each other, and that
trust is built working together in person, at events like
SummitONE.
SummitONE and its presenting organization, Angels for Change,
were created by business professor Laura Bray.
“When my daughter faced shortages of three critical drugs while
battling cancer, I decided that I would do my part to ensure that
every patient has access to the life-saving drugs they need,” Bray
said. “Eradicating drug shortages is a multi-layered, multi-faceted
effort, and I would like to thank the panelists, participants, and
sponsors involved in SummitONE for their expertise and commitment
to our mission.”
A full agenda of the event and list of speakers and panelists is
available here.
About Angels for Change Angels for Change is a
volunteer-supported, global, 501c3 organization started in Tampa,
Fla. that is on a mission to end drug shortages through advocacy,
awareness, and a resilient supply chain. Founder, Laura Bray, was
driven to start Angels for Change after her own child faced three
life-saving drug shortages in nine months of pediatric cancer
treatment. Each day Angels for Change advocates on behalf of any
patient in a life-saving drug shortage, while building
relationships with patients and members of the pharmaceutical
supply chain to end all healthcare crises created by drug
shortages. www.angelsforchange.org
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